Totara Learn Open Discussions

Skills Matrix Setup best practices

Welcome to this forum!

Hi all,

This is my first post, as I've introduced Totara in our Organisation after lots of fighting with Senior Management (no previous LMS).

I'm working with our Totara partner to get our LMS correctly setup, and as we discuss ways to use competencies and programmes, he suggested I might also post the question here - so, here I am.

We are a 480ish employees manufacturing company, making car parts for European automotive customers, a highly regulated environment.

We must be able to track and report on training and skills in a quite detailed way, to make sure our employees can deliver the product conformant to the Quality standards agreed with our customers. Until now, this was done using MS Excel, but during the last audit this area was highlighted as non conformant because the Excel files were not updated correctly by the Supervisors (there's a blank copy also attached if anyone would like to download the Excel file):

Skills Matrix

Basically, each of those lines (Production Paperwork, Fine Trim etc) correspond to a task associated to a mini-training presentation (or video/activity). The sum of all those skills make up the group of activities called Operator Training. But if I look at the job description of an Operator, he needs to cover the basic training + 1 Machine + 1 Robot + Quality training.

Initially I thought about using Competencies with the Parent/Child structure linked to each activity to track completion and training gaps, but this doesn't seem suitable as ALL the Competencies would be shown in the employee's profile report in a flat A-Z structure rather than keeping the Parent/Child structure. It also seems more difficult to adapt for our Maintenance departments where they have a list of 8 different activities they need to perform on each of our 15 different machines.

I then thought of using the Learning Plans, but because we have 4 different machines and 2 different robots, but Operators only need trained on 1 machine and 1 robot, the Plan will have to be assigned manually by their Manager picking what Machine/Robots the guys need to use (I can only imagine how much abuse I'd get if I suggested this!).

The last option I thought about was to use the Programmes, but again I'm not sure this is the best way to go.

Also, it's really important that Supervisors and Managers must be able to see at a glance what machines and activities their employees are trained on, and I think the easiest way to achieve this is using the Badges - as I believe the embedded reports will not give me a graphical option like the one in the picture above where Green means trained, and Red means Missing Mandatory training.

Has anyone ever dealt with huge amount of specific tasks/activities/competencies?
Has anyone ever created a visual skills/training matrix rather than a linear completion report?

Sorry for the long explanation, any questions please let me know.

Thank you,
Alessandro

Castings Matrix for Community.xlsx

Permalink | Reply

Hello Allessandro,

I work in Aviation and we have been using Totara for a few years now.

We assign employees positions. Some of these positions have competency requirements (other than normal recurring training) so there are competencies associated to those specific positions. The competencies also tie to specific courses for on the job training (OJT) that contain the activities/resources required we use a checklist mod (the video, PowerPoint or what not in your case).

Lastly we assign all the personnel who are required to have a certain competency through a learning plan template using custom plan rules. This is done via a specific dynamic audience using the positions. the due dates also get assigned via the plan template.

You can create various reports for instance against those courses, competencies, and learning plans.

So for instance if an employee needs to have three courses for the operation of a certain robot you can have the competency named for the robot and have the courses associated with that competency all as a part of that competency. You can have all the required courses as mandatory and the competency automatically be marked complete when the completion requirements are met.

Managers can at a glance see who is competent and who still has required training using the various filters you can apply to the report(s).

Peter

Permalink | Show parent | Reply

Hi Peter,

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience with me.

I'll definitely have to simplify the competencies and make them machine/robot specific rather than cover the whole set of activities.

In regards to the reports available, I haven't been able to create something satisfactory so far, but I guess I'll work with our provider on them. For now, I'm enjoying the idea of using badges - they're great to have a quick look at and know exactly what training activities have been covered.

Thanks again,

Alessandro

Permalink | Show parent | Reply

Hi Allessandro,

Just wondering how you finished up creating your structure above?

I work in a District Health Board in New Zealand. I have a situation where we have a large no' of competencies for Allied Health Assistants (i.e. Assistants working with Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists, Speech and Language Therapists). The assistants work in different settings, some in acute hospitals, some in rehabilitation settings, and others deliver care in peoples homes. The competencies required in each area have a similar foundation set or group, but have a wide variation of specific area tasks related to the setting. We have a 'library' of competencies based from a source called the Calderdale Framework - largely based on tasks that can be 'shared' between disciplines, or 'delegated' to Assistants. In total there are around 700 competencies in this library.

Depending on the location, a trainer will select a group of competencies that are relevant for the tasks involved. The group of competencies selected can vary widely depending on the area the staff work in.

I'm hoping to use Totara as a platform for this training, running each competency as an individual course, however, when a group of competencies are chosen and the training is combined, it requires each trainee to enrol into each competency individually.

Wondering the best way to coordinate this so a trainer can select a group of competencies, but have the staff involved, register only once?

Any help much appreciated,

Kind regards

Richard

Permalink | Show parent | Reply

Hi Richard

Learning Plans can be used to assign competencies based on the learner's organisation/position.

Competencies can be linked to courses and course pulled into Learning Plans from the competency. See Competency settings for more details. The user can also have their competency permission adjusted under advanced workflow to allow them to request a another competency and competencies can be made optional or manadatory.

It is also possible in Totara 12 to import competency frameworks by HR Import to make this easier to manage

Once the Learning Plan template has been set up to pull through the competencies and courses by the learners organisation/position then the Learning plan can be automatically created for dynamic audience members.

This is what can be done now - we are currently working on gathering requirements and implementing Totara Perform which will include competencies and Learning Plans.

I have asked for someone working on Perform to look at your use case to try and see how we can fit this into the requirements.

Regards

Permalink | Show parent | Reply